Adult Children of Divorce: Confused Love Seekers. By Geraldine K. Piorkowski. Westport, Conn.:  Praeger 2008,  190 pp.

“Love is, I think, the most successful attempt to escape our loneliness and isolation. It is an illusion like every search for human perfection. … To connect one's life in thought and deeds with others is the only way to make it worth living.” So wrote Theodor Reik (1957, p. 194).

But what is Love? There are varieties of manifestations of what we call love, and, according to the research adduced by Geraldine K. Piorkowski at the University of Chicago, in their adulthood children of divorce often have difficulty differentiating love from need or passion. Motivated to “repair old emotional wounds” they substitute fantasy for the “objective qualities of their partners.” At the same time, they tend to be less trusting and more anxious in their love relations, with the result that the divorce rate among adult children of divorce is twice that of others. Thus, the ensuing difficulties are passed on to yet another generation.

Twenty-five percent of adults in their twenties, thirties, and forties are children of divorce. Remaining particularly sensitive to the problems their parents had, they are likely to overreact in their own romantic relationships. At some time, many of them become our patients. Many avail themselves of “couple therapy.”

Relying heavily on research (with approximately fifty references per chapter, on average) the author informs us of the psychological and sociological risk factors as well as the practices that promote good relations. As others have done, she distinguishes romantic love from companionable love, the latter developing more slowly and remaining more stable over time.

The choice of partner is certainly crucial: blamers, conflict-avoiders, emotional hermits, narcissists, immature and oppositional types, or passive-aggressive partners are bound to create problematic intimate relations. Although such unions do not necessarily result in divorce,